Texas-born, Detroit-raised, New York-based artist Matthew Dear has a new EP, to be followed by a full-length in 2012. It’s worth mentioning now for two reasons: one, the driving, “chugging” rhythms of the single, “Headcage,” will pop into your head and stay there, led by Dear’s vocal ability to croon and groove simultaneously. Second, the opening of this video may well make your mind go squish. The work of London-based director Morgan Beringer, seen previously milking monochrome textures out of another Matthew Dear collab, the film makes it look like some very colorful part of the Earth’s crust turned a film into magma. It settles down, but the opening frames are to me transcendent, especially when set to a similarly-morphing sonic backdrop.

You can stream and download the single via SoundCloud:

Matthew Dear – Headcage by ghostly

More on the upcoming release from Ghostly:
Matthew Dear: Headcage

The music writing echoes a bit for me Eno and Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; perhaps channeling that, the album art by Michael Cina for Dear has washes of indistinct color, like a kaleidoscope set into motion, then blurred. Ghostly reports Dear co-produced the single with Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid, vets of the acclaimed self-titled Fever Ray. The rest of the album is full of other vocal and producer collaborations. More on this when it arrives.

Matthew Dear – Black City Teaser from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

Matthew Dear is one of electronic music’s great sonic innovators and impresarios, co-founder of Ghostly International and Spectral Sound (Ghostly recently celebrating 100 landmark releases), and recording extensively under musical identities Audion, False, and Jabberjaw. But for all that, I think it’s his voice as a songwriter and musical imagineer, as in the releases in his own name, that’s most vital. There’s a directness to his compositions and lyrical voice that’s stunning, wrapped in elaborate textures and grooves but irresistible.

All of this is reason to look forward to Black City, the full-length Matthew Dear coming out in August, as a potential highlight of the summer and 2010. This week, we get a little taste of that record with the release of “Soil to Seed,” a relaxed treat with signature doubled-up vocals, as comfortable as a July watermelon. If you happen not to like my fruit metaphors, sit back and enjoy the free download:

http://promo.ghostly.com/mp3/matthewdear-soiltoseed_1924328.mp3

I’ll say this: it’s over way, way too soon, which is probably a good sign.

Also released this week is a short teaser promo trailer video. These things are all the rage these days, but this particular entry feels less like a billboard, and more like a visual appetizer, complete with shadowy, gothic imagery undulating in glorious black and white. From the little snippets we get, it seems the visuals get the same stark richness as Dear’s productions. A spokesperson for Ghostly tells us more video is planned. Stay tuned to Create Digital Motion for more on the art direction (and other Ghostly visuals).

It’s a Ghostly release, so in the post-album age you can bet that you’ll get a case for why you should purchase or even preorder the record. Those details are a bit involved, so at this point I quoth the press release:

Pre-ordering Black City on iTunes (starting July 13th in North America & July 20th elsewhere) and The Ghostly Store (starting July 13th) gets you the manic disco odyssey “Little People (Black City)”, as well as exclusive non-album track “Innh Dahh” upon the record’s arrival. (After August 3rd, “Innh Dahh” will no longer be available at iTunes.)

As well as the usual formats, Black City will also be released in a limited edition Totem design made by an award winning design firm Boym, who won the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s National Design Award in 2009. More details on the Totem design coming soon.

Ghostly’s pricing is a steal – US$16 gets you vinyl and CD and instant bonus download; $8 gets you high-quality MP3.

Stay tuned for more on the release.

http://matthewdear.com
http://ghostly.com/artists/matthew-dear
http://boym.com/

Guitar Rig Hero is a huge contest with some big prizes. Native Instruments notes that users were already, without prompting, posting Guitar Rig videos to YouTube. So, they’ve put together a jury to properly judge the best possible contributions, with jurors including the likes of the Deftones, Dweezil Zappa (yes, the offspring of Frank Zappa), and (one of my personal favorites) Mogwai. Prizes: a quad-core Fujitsu-Siemens laptop, NI software, and (non-software) guitars from Gibson.

NI says participants are “asked to capture a video of their most original and spectacular performance using GUITAR RIG 3, without any sonic or artistic limitations applying.” What’s interesting is that not all the entries are using guitars — there’s already an interesting experimental entry with violin and Guitar Rig, and I suspect if we unleash some of the CDM community on this contest, there will be more.

You don’t have to own Guitar Rig 3 to participate; the demo version will work (and then you can try to, you know, win the full version). The contest ends September 30.

I’ve run synths, keyboards, and even sitar through Guitar Rig, so I’m interested to hear what other not-guitars you can come up with.

Guitar Rig Hero Contest Page @ NI

Guitar Rig Contest YouTube Channel (with various videos up already)

Matthew Dear, performing as Audion, is coming to Minitek in New York this weekend, and we know from reader feedback that you’d like us to talk to him. (Yes, some of the endless minimal entries in Minitek, true to the festival’s name, start to blur together, but Matthew to me is someone really musically special.)

As it happens, among Beatport’s regular contests, there’s an Audion remix contest for “Billy Says Go.” Downloads started this week, and you can submit through the end of the month. This is public voting as opposed to juried voting, but since I know there are some Audion fans out there, let us know if you do something nice. Prizes: Traktor Scratch, $100 Beatport gift card, and a grab bag of Beatport swag. Those of you trash talking Richie Hawtin, maybe this is your chance to show us your skills.

Audion Remix Competition @ Beatportal

Sonoma’s RiffWorks software and accompanying community is apparently popular among readers here, so it seems worth passing this along. The RiffWorks site is awarding RiffWorld.com community members IK Multimedia software and other downloads and goodies. That in itself isn’t that interesting, but what is a bit different about this particular competition is that you can collaborate on entries; if you decide not to go solo, you can invite up to three other people to work with you. I still prefer collaborating in person rather than online, but I’ll be interested to hear how collaboration is working out for people. (Naturally, the reason they’re emphasizing this is to promote the collaboration features of the site — but you’re the best judge of how that works.)

RiffRumble 12

Seriously, do let us know if you choose to participate in these contests, or if there are other online communities you’re working on; we’d love to know. I imagine running this means a dozen PR folks will be breathing down my neck tomorrow with other contests, but these do seem up the CDM alley and … well, for the rest, that’s what the “mute conversation” feature in Gmail is for. Enjoy!

Yo! Earth to useless hipster: this is New York. We used to have real crime here, not you jacking someone’s external FireWire box. Jeez.

I’m a little late on this — the crime took place April 4 at Galapagos’ Bunker party (formerly at Tonic).

Matthew Dear’s harddrive was stolen @ Galapagos [Brooklyn Vegan, via Dance Tracks Digital]

Some jerk in comments on DTD says, "Who cares hwo mucgh creativity is therein blippy tracks that lst 45 minutes." [sic] Aside from Pete’s complete inability to spell the easiest words in the English language, he’s risking some major bad karma by writing that — well, unless he plays with theft-proof wax cylinders, that is.

For reasons that escape me, this whole incident sends the Brooklyn Vegan rock-loving crowd into a frenzy of anti-computer, pro-guitar rhetoric. Yes, that must be it — God Himself took Matthew’s hard drive, because playing music out of computers is the Devil’s work. The classic “FireWire Smite” move.

“The storage device that you just removed was not properly put away before being stolen from this computer. Your set may have been damaged or lost. In the future, please play a banjo, or risk eternal damnation. Greetings, Professor Falken. Shall we play a game?”